Hate-Speech Bill: A threat to democracy in South Africa

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On February 8, 2018, the Hate Crimes Working Group (HCWG) published a petition, widely covered in the media, decrying the fact that the controversial Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill (the hate-speech bill), published for public comment in late 2016, is being delayed.

While the HCWG's and human-rights activists' impatience can be understood – South Africa has a hate-crime problem that urgently needs to be dealt with – the hate-speech bill is not the vehicle to accomplish this. On the contrary, it may lead to tyranny that South Africa has only ever known under the Suppression of Communism Act of the apartheid era.